Mike Monroe: Labor talks could be ice cold

NEW YORK — It snowed on the NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium a year ago last weekend, so commissioner David Stern wasn’t surprised when snow and cold became part of the story at Super Bowl XLV.

“We could have told the NFL owners it snows in Dallas,” he said.

It’s apt to be chilly in Los Angeles on Friday when the NBA hits town for All-Star Weekend, too, though not necessarily because of any meteorological event.

The big chill looming over All-Star Weekend is the lockout the league’s owners are prepared to call unless the membership of the players’ union accepts pay cuts. Stern estimated $750 million to $800 million must be cut annually to stem operating losses the league claims it is sustaining.

Labor unrest was front and center during Super Bowl week because the NFL’s agreement with its players’ union expires on March 3. The pro football owners have threatened a lockout, too, and Stern chuckles about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s selective interpretation of the NBA’s labor impasse.

In recent remarks about his league’s increasingly rancorous dispute with its players, Goodell defended the NFL’s reluctance to turn over financial data to the players’ union. He latched onto a statement made last summer by National Basketball Players Association executive director Billy Hunter when the NBA projected losses for the 2009-10 season would be $400 million.

Then, Hunter called the projection “baloney.”

“It’s interesting that we’re watching the NFL go through the same, similar activities,” Stern told the Express-News. “It’s fun. Everyone takes ?whatever they need from the other negotiations. I was reading a report of Roger (Goodell) saying, ‘Well, the NBA gave all their players all their information and the players rejected it.’

“And I’m saying, ‘Thanks, Roger. Here’s the NFL, which is making money and won’t give the players their books; and we are not making money and do give the players our books. We should be in better shape.’

“We’ll see. I think it’s just interesting to see it play out.”

Don’t doubt that Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, point man in the negotiations with the union, were miffed when Hunter dismissed as misleading financial data that included the tax returns of all 30 teams.

It had not been easy to get the owners to turn over tax info.

Stern and Silver briefed reporters on the progress of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, or lack of it, before the season began. Then, Silver called All-Star Weekend an important milepost because teams would begin pushing season ticket renewals for 2011-12 in January and begin asking sponsors to get on board for next season about the same time.

“Uncertainty is bad news for any business,” Silver said.

There won’t be any progress to report in Los Angeles.

Oh, there will be a meeting, and most of the All-Stars, East and West, will show up at the negotiating table in a show of support.

This may necessitate a larger meeting room, but it’s not going to frighten Spurs chairman Peter Holt and the other members of the owners’ labor relations committee.

What is important when Holt’s committee sits down with Hunter, NBPA president Derek Fisher and the union’s executive board in Los Angeles is numbingly simple: Both sides must understand the urgency to getting a new agreement before the old one expires on July 1.

There will be what Stern calls “rhetorical flourishes” this weekend.

These will be all sound and fury, signifying very little.

The only tangible feeling apt to come from Los Angeles will be the sense of dread that the entire 2011-12 season is in serious jeopardy.